Bug Canyon Battle Report

Dexcon two weeks ago was a blast.

I'm a bit late in posting my battle reports, but real life often gets in the way of a good time :)

I did post game 1 with pics and a link to a slideshow over on the Mongoose Forum HERE

I haven't had time to post my second Starship Troopers game yet. Here are a few pics from the second game. The Mobile Infantry had a more difficult game. There were Bugs everywhere and the Plasma Bugs game objectives were never in any real threat.





















I also ran a 28mm Weird World War Two game with Victory Force miniatures. Below are some pictures from that game. I'd post more but my camera settings were off. I should spend the time to read the manual...

The Americans got shot up pretty bad by German mortars but the Germans had some unfortunate dice rolls which included their elite night fighting squad routing in the face of an American tank, and later an explosive dog caught in a mortar attack blew up causing a chain reaction in the special canine squad that resulted ina a blown up halftrack nearby..in the end the Americans were flanking the Germans making their defensive line untenable.

























The second game of Weird WWII didn't get run but I liked the terrain placement better:














I also had planned to run a ShockForce game on that Sunday. It was setup along with two of the eight factions I planned to use shown- JC Figures' New Eden Militia and Spriggan's Spugs with some old school 40K Zoats as mercenary allies. But sadly the game was not run due to lack of players on a Sunday morning.


































So I packed up my Shockforce game and I got into an afternoon game of B5:ACtA and had a great time maneuvering 2 Whitestar ships around against 4 other players and their 2 ships each in a last player standing game. I made a non-aggression pact with another player and it came down to the two of us dueling it out in the end. My dice finally failed and my last ship was vaporized but I had a great time. Sorry no pictures of that..

Tonight's Mission and other Stuff

I'm still getting last minute items ready for the convention. Tonight I'm painting 4 Stalwart Bug Field Generators and 4 Mobile Infantry. I actually have enough Mobile Infantry but I've got more than one color scheme. Rather than mix my brown armored troopers into my green armored Roughneck platoon, I'm making up 4 new troopers to fill out that platoon. Some of my brown "veterans" will be staying home. Then I've got to sort out into containers the separate forces with their unit cards.

Ebay has been a recent boon. I've got 2 more box sets of the SST game headed my way for about $35 each with shipping. Not bad considering that works out to less than a dollar a figure, plus the rulebook and some more dice. One can never have enough 6 and 10 sided dice and black is one of my favorite die colors. I also got a good deal on the Mobile Infantry Micro Platforms set. I had already bought the weapons separate from the crew as a bits order from Mongoose last year, so I didn't really need them but I decided I wanted to have the kneeling pose variety of the gunners. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on some other auctions..

Something else I won recently were some old Prince August molds for French and British Napoleonic cannon. They were about $8 each. I plan to attempt making naval gun carriages and using the barrels from the molds to make ship guns for a scratch built 25mm pirate ship. This probably won't be until Fall. I've also got ot get my 25mm Foundry Pirates painted. And of course any number of more attractive projects could come along and scuttle the whole idea..

Crunch time!!

This past week has flown by. I got a few more things done. Wednesday night I took a break to hand out with some gaming buddies at The Only Game in Town, aka TOGIT. I showed up early and ran a playtest of my Starship Troopers WASP platoon. It was a quick game and then everyone broke out into 1 on 1 games of Warmachine. I spent the time BS-ing with some of the other guys and before I knew it.. it was time to go home. One of my buddies gave me a nice resin Sci-fi dropship that is just perfect for some 15mm Sci-fi figures I've got. I'll showcase those in some later post when I have time to take some good pictures.

This past week I also went about laminating some unit cards for my Starship Troopers games. I might be wasting my time ultimately since the new version of the game is due out sometime August or later. They will still serve me well for the time being..

Dexcon is next weekend. That means I'm busy putting all my stuff together for the convention. I'm running 3 different types of games across 4 days so I have to plan my packing strategy. Thursday and Friday night's Weird WWII game items are for the most part already packed. I did that earlier today. I was also reviewing my SST stuff and found some things that need to be touched up or repaired. Not a big deal. I also picked up extra tote bins for some of the terrain pieces for my Bug Canyon boards. I still need to gather all my factions for the Shockforce game. All in all I think I'm on track to be ready.

I also got some painting done today. It was scenery, not miniatures. Crescent Root Studios makes awesome 25/28mm scale resin Middle Eastern buildings.

http://www.crescent-root.com/

I have 4 buildings, 2 towers, and an assortment of walls and gates to use for fantasy gaming. My Blackblood Orcs and Goblins will have a nice fortified village or I can use it as a desert town for a Pulp style adventure skirmish game.

June Accomplishments, July Plans

Well, I've got a far lot more accomplished than I thought I would in terms of painting and making terrain. Quite a bit more of Starship Troopers collection is painted now. Stuff I painted was all Starship Troopers related. What is shown are the support missile set of 2.




6 Reliant weapon platforms with 6 crews as well as the 8 Roughnecks from the CGI series.










8 female troopers, 4 Heroes of the Federation, and a CHAS unit.












15 WASP Troopers.













..and 20 Arachnid Warriors. That's 70 figures plus others I started that aren't shown.





All in all not a bad month. I really needed to get a lot of this done for the big convention game. Making a commitment to run a game is a great motivator for getting a lot of gaming projects completed.

My plans for July are just as ambition. I've already got a few things done which I'll try to share later this week. They include Mobile Infantry on quad ATVs and some alternate history WWII Germans. I have to touch up more figures that I started in June such as some Arachnid Mantis Hunters and Hopper Bugs. I'm also going to quickly paint up some Middle Eastern style village terrain from Crescent Root Studios. And I recently starting on a sculpting/conversion contest to make my likeness into a WWII figure from Victory Force. I'm a bit behind on the that. The good news is my green stuff from last year isn't all dried out.

Pics from Bug Canyon Part IV

I thought I'd share some of those pictures now. This picture is another angle of the whole board.


This picture is a close up of the crackle effect on the surface.


Here is a picture with some Arachnids and Mobile Infantry to show the scale better.


I'm amazed I was able to get this terrain project completed with some time to spare. I can barely wait for the upcoming convention (Dexcon 10, 18th-22nd http://www.dexposure.com/dexcon10.html ). I'm running 2 games of Starship Troopers on the 21st with this terrain. It will be interesting to see how players use the channels in between the plateau elements. More on the game setup later. I do need to plan out how to safely transport it..The large 2x4 sections will fit fine in the bed of my pickup truck. I still have to requisition some large plastic tote bins for the 28 individual plateau sections. And of course there are my figures, rules, and player sheets. And I'm also running WWII skirmish games and another Scif-i skirmish game, Shockforce.

Building Bug Canyon Part III

It's been just over a week since last time I checked in. I'm essentially done with the terrain. Last weekend I completely covered the board sections in the brown basecoat. This past week I experimented with using crackle medium for a faux painting effect on the top of the terrain. I wasn't happy with the initial color I tried. It was too light and not brown enough in comparison to the basecoat. I settled on using a Rustoleum color called Nutmeg. This was brushed over the crackle medium the following evening and I really liked the effect. I also used this color to roughly drybrush the sides of the terrain. Tonight I went over the sides with the Nutmeg and also applied matte clearcoat to the crackle effect to keep it safe. Didn't get a chance to take pictures tonight. I'll be posting some more pictures soon, but here are some pictures I took earlier in the week. (The whole board before drybrushing on the top, some Roughnecks on the crackle effect on the bottom):